Semi-random thoughts on ERP and accounting software, Microsoft, Windows, business, and life in general.

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Legacy ERP and Accounting Software

How old is the version of ERP or accounting software that runs your business? Did you load last year’s update? The year before? It’s not unusual to talk to businesses that haven’t upgraded their software in 5 or more years. Some businesses are still using the same software version they installed 10 years ago.

Old Software Versions Cause Problems

In today’s environment, software more than a couple of years old can cause technical problems. New versions of operating systems (like Windows 10) can break old software. If the new Windows version completely breaks your software, that’s really good news. Bad news is when the new version just corrupts data and you do not discover it until after the damage is done.

The Cost of Old ERP Software

But the real cost of old software is in features unused. We were finishing an upgrade yesterday from a software version that was over 10 years old, and doing quick data checks to make sure the data converted correctly. Customer balances and vendor balances in the old version compared to the converted data is a good test. In the new software version, we had an easy-to-use list that exported to Excel for comparison. In the old version, we had a report. Using these, we verified the first eight or ten balances manually, then went to the last page and verified the total. The upgrade worked fine, by the way. But I’d forgotten how much more difficult simple things were in the old version vs. the new version.

Not only that, but to finding a report in the old version took digging around on menus. We knew the name of the report (Trial Balance), but it wasn’t in the first few places we looked. In the new version, typing “trial balance” in a search box brought the report up on a list.

These two items are the real cost of legacy software: features that you give up because the old version didn’t have them, and features that are hard to find because of the construction of the old software.

I know upgrading can be expensive, but be sure to count the cost of NOT upgrading.